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Trouble was brewing in Europe:
abuse of
authority, ostentation, debauchery and bribery. Or so some Christians
viewed the state of affairs around 1500.They considered the Pope the devil
incarnate and his Church a bastion of lust, stupidity, greed and
corruption. The sermons of the Dominican Johann Tetzel were water on the
critics' mill. In 1517 Tetzel proclaimed that the Pope had granted him
such authority that he could grant absolution even to someone who
confessed he had fathered the child of the Virgin Mary — that is, if the
sinner was to pay.
For some time now pulpits had been resounding with
sermons offering remission of sins for money and a direct path to Heaven
without a detour through Purgatory. The sermons preached by Johann Tetzel,
however, were the ones that provoked Martin Luther, an Augustine monk and
professor of theology at Wittenberg. In mounting a challenge, Luther said
it was utter nonsense to think God could be bought. He held that the only
thing one could do for one's salvation was to believe in God and live
accordingly. Luther was in a rage when he wrote out his "Ninety-Five
Theses". He is said to have nailed them to the portal of Wittenberg Castle
Church on 31 October 1517. All that has been conclusively proved by
historians, however, is that he sent his "Theses" to his bishop on the
Saturday that marks the beginning of the Reformation.
Luther's goal was a theological debate; the authorities
would have none of it. But thousands of copies of the "Theses" had been
made and distributed, thanks to the new tech nology
of printing, and a popular movement coalesced around them. It was too late
for the ancient Church: the Reformation became a revolution, scourging
pilgrimages and liturgical practises as "senseless foolery". Led by
Luther's rhetoric which was sometimes eloquent and religious, sometimes
violent and vulgar, the Reformers went quickly from demanding the
abolition of priestly celibacy to a thorough re-casting of the Church. And
the movement assumed a political and social dimension, propagated under
the slogan: "freedom of Christian people". Together with the Humanist
movement, the Reformation effected cultural change on a hitherto
unprecedented scale.
Luther had a broad following: he was joined by
merchants, peasants, craftsmen and princes. Supported by the princes,
Luther was able to stand up to the Pope and the Emperor. Among his
followers was the Northern Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach the Elder.
At the Wittenberg Court, Cranach became a personal friend of the Reformer.
Cranach executed several portraits of Luther, among them one for St Mary's
Church, Wittenberg. It portrays Luther in his office as preacher there. In
much of northern Europe, the ancient Church was no match for Luther's
movement. After the Schism with Rome had taken place, Protestantism was
ready to grow into a world-wide movement.
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